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A Ghost That Can’t Count

During the metropolitan exams of an imperial examination¹ of the Yongzheng² Emperor’s reign, a young man with the surname of Tang had a female ghost with dishevelled hair breaking in his booth in the middle of the night.

She tore his examination paper into pieces that flew all over the place like butterflies.

Tang, a man of righteousness and courage, maintained his cool.

“Whatever happened in my previous life is unknown to me,” he sat straight and said. “I have never done any harm in this life as far as I know. Why did you mess with me then?”

The ghost looked quite confused. “Are you not number 47?” She asked.

“I’m number 49,” Tang said.

It turned out that the ghost skipped two vacant booths and miscounted.

She stared at Tang for a while, and sincerely apologized before she left.

A moment later, an eerie shriek came from the number 47 booth. Later it was announced that the person was bewitched and suffered from sudden illness.

–From Ji Yun’s Notes of the Thatched Abode of Close Observations (The Qing Dynasty)

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1. Metropolitan is the second of the three major levels the Ming dynasty’s and the Qing dynasty’s imperial examination used to select government officials.

2. The Yongzheng Emperor (12-13-1678 – 10-8-1735) was the fifth emperor of the Qing dynasty.

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For more ancient Chinese strange tales, feel free to check out Head Flyer and 100 More Ancient Chinese Strange Stories

Head Flyer

Head flyers and head droppers are humans with special abilities to let their head leave their body and fly around. Mostly at night, according to numerous ancient Chinese stories and essays. I translated two of the stories and included them in my book Head Flyer and 100 More Ancient Chinese Strange Stories. It’s free for Kindle Unlimited users. Non users can also get a sample which includes 11 stories if I counted it right.

I will resume updating on this site with more stories and interesting facts about ancient Chinese stories, Chinese history, and folklore in general, since I found out I’ve been paying for it.

Thank you for reading and welcome to check out the book!

Dancing Corpse

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A Hermit named Zheng Binyan used to live in Hebei province. The head of village he stayed at just lost his wife, and the corpse was not coffined yet.

By sunset, their children started hearing faint music. The music became louder and louder, as if the music itself was able to walk. As the music came to the front yard, the dead body started moving too.

When the music arrived at the room of the body and started resonating around the beam and pillars, the corpse got up and started dancing.

The music then left the room, followed by the body, and went away.

It was completely dark by that time and it turned out to be a moonless night. The family was then too scared to go after the dancing corpse.

The widower only learned about it later that night when he finally got home wasted. The drunken man burst into rage upon the news, broke off a mulberry branch as thick as one’s arm, and went out in search for his wife, cursing.

After walking down about two miles in a cemetery, he finally heard the same music coming from a cypress forest. As he approached, he saw his dead wife dancing under a tree surrounded by faint but bright flame.

The widower wielded the mulberry branch right at the corpse; the music stopped and the dead woman instantly fell. The head of the village then picked up his wife’s dead body and walked his way back.

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Translated from a story in Youyang Zazu (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang) by Duan Chengshi (Tang Dynasty)

More stories are available in my book Head Flyer and 100 More Ancient Chinese Strange Stories at: https://a.co/d/6gZruWM

The Ferry Goddess of Jealousy

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Back in Jin dynasty during the years of Dashi*, a man named Liu Boyu had a wife whose maiden name was Duan and her courtesy name was Mingguang (meaning bright light).

Mingguang was very jealous. Boyu used to read poem Ode to the Goddess of Luo River and say something like, “If only I could have the Goddess of Luo River (Luo Shen) as my wife! Then there would be nothing else I want in my life!”

Mingguang could not take it anymore and asked, “You would choose a fictional goddess over me? How about I die? Huh? Then no doubt I will be a goddess too!”

On that night Mingguang jumped into the river near by and killed herself.

Seven days after Mingguang died, she appeared in Boyu’s dream at night, saying, “You wished to marry a goddess. Your wish came true. I am a goddess now.”

Boyu was scared and woke up. He never got anywhere near the river the rest of his life, not to mention taking a ferry.

The ferry of the river though, started to have strange effects.

Whenever a good-looking lady wanted to go across the river, she had to make a total mess of herself by damaging her clothes and making her make-up and hair as untidy as possible. Otherwise, the whole boat would suffer from sudden and outrageous storm which would nearly scare everyone on board to death.

In the case of plain or even ugly ladies, however, no matter how dressed-up she was, the river wouldn’t bother to even stir a bit, as Mingguang the goddess was not jealous.

Therefore, ladies who could not cause any storm on the river were considered unattractive. As a result, women who were not confident of their appearance would also mess up their look to avoid this kind of embarrassment.

There then came a saying: “To find out if your girl is a true beauty, take her to the ferry; if there is a storm, she fits the goddess’s norm.”

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Translated from a story in Youyang Zazu (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang) by Duan Chengshi (Tang Dynasty)

*c. 265-274

More stories are available in my book Head Flyer and 100 More Ancient Chinese Strange Stories at: https://a.co/d/6gZruWM